I keep a folder. Every scan, every blood test, my medication list, a food and energy diary, and a page of questions for the next appointment. I started it because I was tired of being handed numbers I didn't understand, and I've carried it to every consultation since. It changed those conversations more than anything else I've done. This post is for anyone who has been handed a results sheet and nodded politely while understanding about half of it.
I am not going to tell you what your numbers should be. That is your GP's job, and the ranges depend on your age, your history and what else is going on, which is exactly why a blog shouldn't do it. What I can do is explain what each marker is measuring, in plain words, and what I've learned about which everyday habits tend to move it. Think of this as the vocabulary for your next appointment.
Two you can measure at home
Blood pressure. The force of blood against your artery walls. It rarely announces itself, which is why it's worth knowing. A home monitor costs less than a week's coffee, and the habits that move it are among the most food-shaped of all: less salt (most of which arrives hidden in bread, processed meat, ready meals and stock cubes rather than from the shaker), more potassium from vegetables, beans, tomatoes, yoghurt and potatoes, less alcohol, more walking, better sleep.
Your waist. A tape measure around the middle tells you something the bathroom scales can't: where fat is sitting. Fat around the organs is the kind that disturbs metabolism, and it responds to the same changes as everything below. Your GP may use waist-to-height; the tape at home is enough to notice direction.
The glucose pair
HbA1c. Red blood cells live for about three months, and sugar sticks to them in proportion to how much has been circulating. HbA1c reads that coating, so it's an average of your blood sugar over roughly twelve weeks. It can't be flattered by a good breakfast on the morning of the test, which is why doctors rely on it.
Fasting glucose. A snapshot of blood sugar after a night without food. Useful, but it's one frame, and it misses what happens after meals, which is where the day is actually lived.
What moves both: protein, fat and fibre at every meal; eating the starch last; a short walk after eating; fewer refined carbohydrates and sweet drinks; keeping muscle, because muscle is where glucose goes. Sleep matters more than people expect; one short night shows up the next day.
The blood fats
Triglycerides. The form in which the body stores spare energy. This is the most diet-responsive number on the whole sheet, and it's often the first to move when someone changes how they eat. It rises with refined carbohydrate, sugar and alcohol more than with fat, and it falls with the opposite plus movement. Blood fats also peak three to four hours after a meal, so the fasted number sees only part of the picture.
HDL and LDL cholesterol. The familiar "good" and "bad" labels are a simplification doctors use because it's a reasonable one. LDL carries cholesterol out to the tissues and, in excess, into artery walls; HDL carries it back to the liver. Olive oil, nuts, oily fish, fibre (oats, beans, aubergine, the viscous kind) and fewer ultra-processed foods shift the balance in the right direction. Genetics has a say here too, which is one more reason the interpretation belongs to your doctor.
Inflammation
CRP. C-reactive protein is made by the liver when the immune system is active. A high-sensitivity version is used to look at low-level, long-running inflammation, the kind linked to heart disease. The catch: it rises with any infection, a cold included, so one reading means little and the trend means more. What tends to lower the background level: a Mediterranean-style pattern, oily fish, colour on the plate, steady blood sugar, movement, sleep, and less of the food that comes in crinkly packets.
The liver
ALT and GGT. Enzymes that leak into the blood when liver cells are under strain. In someone who drinks little, a raised reading is often the first sign of fat building up in the liver, a condition now so common that it has had a change of name (MASLD, where it used to be "non-alcoholic fatty liver"). The liver makes fat from surplus sugar, and fructose in particular, so the levers are the glucose ones above, plus alcohol, plus the waist.
What I've seen it do
Someone very close to me walked into a GP appointment with the prediabetes and fatty-liver pair on his sheet. No dramatic programme followed. The bread came off the table for most meals, breakfast became eggs and vegetables instead of toast, the evening walk became non-negotiable, and dinner was built the way everything in this kitchen is built: protein, fat and fibre first. The numbers moved. His doctor was the one who confirmed it, which is how it should be.
Getting your numbers
In England, anyone between 40 and 74 without an existing diagnosis is entitled to a free NHS Health Check every five years, which covers most of the list above. Elsewhere, ask your doctor what a metabolic panel would include. Take questions with you. The one that served me best after a difficult diagnosis was simple: "If you were in my position, what would you do?"
Then put the results in a folder. Next time, you'll see the direction, and direction is what the kitchen can change.